Agriculture Agro Ecology and Biodiversity

By Allah Dad Khan

What is Agro ecology

Seven Approaches by Prof Jules Pretty Ecologist

• 1. Integrated pest management (IPM), which uses ecosystem resilience and diversity for pest, disease and weed control, and seeks only to use pesticides when other options are ineffective

• 2. Integrated nutrient management, which seeks both to balance the need to fix nitrogen within farm systems with the need to import inorganic and organic sources of nutrients, and to reduce nutrient losses through erosion control

• 3. Conservation tillage, which reduces the amount of tillage, sometimes to zero, so that soil can be conserved and available moisture used more efficiently.

Seven Approaches by Prof Jules Pretty Ecologist

• 4. Agroforestry, which incorporates multifunctional trees into agricultural systems, and collective management of nearby forest resources

• 5. Aquaculture, which incorporates fish, shrimps and other aquatic resources into farm systems, such as into irrigated rice fields and fishponds, and so leads to increases in protein production

• 6. Water harvesting in dry land areas, which can mean formerly abandoned and degraded lands can be cultivated, and additional crops grown on small patches of irrigated land owing to better rainwater retention.

• 7. Livestock integration into farming systems, such as dairy cattle, pigs, and poultry, including using zero-grazing cut and carry systems.

Prof Pretty says ecological production system exhibts the following attributes

• Utilising crop varieties and livestock breeds with a high ratio of productivity to use of externally- and internally-derived inputs. ii. Avoiding the unnecessary use of external inputs. iii. Harnessing agro ecological processes such as nutrient cycling, biological nitrogen fixation, allelopathy, predation and parasitism. iv. Minimising use of technologies or practices that have adverse impacts on the environment and human health. v. Making productive use of human capital in the form of knowledge and capacity to adapt and innovate, and social capital to resolve common landscape-scale problems. vi. Quantifying and minimising the impacts of system management on externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions, availability of clean water, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and dispersal of pests, pathogens and weeds.

Benefits of Agro ecology • An increase in food availability and improved nutrition– higher yields led to greater

access to food throughout the year and more diverse sources of food led to increased nutritional security for children and all members of the farmer household

• Increase in household income – organic and ecological agriculture had a positive impact on reducing poverty, with smallholders saving money through less fertilizer and pesticide use, extra income from selling surpluses, and adding value through processing

• Increase in education, skills, health – all farmers gained increased knowledge of ecological methods, health benefits from more nutritious food, and greater resilience to external threats such as droughts, floods and landslides

• Benefits to community – the formation of farmers’ groups and co-operatives lowered costs and increased knowledge and trust amongst farmers

• Infrastructure improvements – 40% reported improvements to physical infrastructure (e.g. transport and communications) and greater access to markets

• Benefits to natural environment – all but one of the cases reported benefits to soil fertility, water retention and supply, flood control and biodiversity.

Case study 1:

• Allai Valley, Pakistan An ecological and organic agriculture-focused initiative to rehabilitate the remote and rugged earthquake-hit Allai Valley near the Karakorum Highway in the Pakistani Himalayas has transformed the environment, food security, livelihoods and social relations of 172,000 poor inhabitants of this mountain valley since 2007.71 The highly-mountainous Allai Valley in Battagram in northern Pakistan was devastated by a powerful earthquake in 2005, and much of the destruction was exacerbated by environmental degradation – such as soil erosion and deforestation caused by illegal logging – which led to widespread and lethal landslides during the earthquake

• Against a backdrop of extremely high rates of poverty, deprivation and food insecurity, and traditionally governed along feudal lines and by powerful clerics and under an especially strict version of Sunni Islam (many women were secluded through purdah and not allowed to visit relatives, for example), the Partnership for Recovery and Development of Allai (PRDA) worked through the Sungi Development Foundation to set up a village-based movement to help repair and reforest the valley and to diversify livelihoods and food security options through an integrated range of low-cost ecological-based agricultural systems and approaches.

Knowledge Through Demonstration

• Working through a new network of 437 both male and female-governed Village Committees, thousands of men and significantly women smallholders improved their ecological and organic farming skills and knowledge through on-farm demonstration plots and thousands of ecological farming skills training sessions and farmer-to-farmer knowledge visits and exchanges.72 Moving away from simply mono-cropping rice and wheat and transporting key produce and vegetables into the Allai Valley, the villagers set up 35 women-managed local-variety seed banks and learnt to use cow-dung and yeast-based bio-fertilizers and local wood-ash, tobacco and chilli-based bio-pesticides to diversify into growing year-round organic vegetables in home gardens and for markets to generate income (such as broccoli, spinach, turnip, potatoes, tomatoes, okra, French beans and peas).

Care to Honey bee

• They also revived traditional and pesticide-free wild honeybee keeping, established fruit orchards, agro-forestry, poultry-rearing and peasantries, introduced Mott grass as fodder, replanted over a million native and soil-binding trees, tidied up 10 food bazaar markets, set up the fair trade-based Sungi Organics private enterprise and moved into organically-certified commercial horticulture and floriculture (such as brinjal, walnuts, garlic and gladiolus) and coaxed others out of illegal logging and into growing high-value crops, and reduced the previously endemic use of cutting down local torchwood for lighting and firewood by establishing 18 micro hydro-electric generators to supply electricity after dark.

Empowers small producers • The initiative has had a remarkable impact. Most significantly,

the emergence of thousands of poor and secluded women into the governance structures and participatory development of the Allai Valley has been radically transformative for social and cultural relations. Farm profits and productivity, food security, nutrition, health and education outcomes, employment opportunities, livelihoods, the environment and soil health have all improved considerably, according to recent assessments of the PRDA.73 Vegetable cultivation has expanded by 1,000 acres in the valley, 80% of households now cultivate their own vegetables, and maize and rice yields have increased by 15-20% under improved organic methods, according to the Sungi Development Foundation.74

Agro-ecology increases climate resilience

• Evidence indicates that agro-ecology farming improves resilience to climate change. Climate change means more extreme weather-related events. According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the likely changes in weather patterns related to global warming are:

• Contraction of snow-covered areas and shrinking of sea ice • Sea level rises and higher water temperature • Increased frequency of hot extremes and heat waves � �• Heavy precipitation events and an increase in areas affected by

droughts floods and landslides �• Increased intensity of tropical cyclones (typhoons and

hurricanes)1

Agro ecology • Farmer-to-farmer learning and training and farmer field schools

have been proven to reduce pesticide use and instead disseminate and replace external inputs with continuous learning and valuable farmer knowledge. The success of SRI and push-pull systems are largely due to demonstration of fields managed by lead or model farmers and partnerships with national research institutes

• Social capital – in the form of groups termed community, participatory, joint, de-centralized and co-management – are considered a prerequisite for the adoption of sustainable behaviors, such as agro-ecology. States can support and build on these grassroots networks and initiatives, and some have done so to varying degrees

Conclusion

• Governments must also ensure key public goods, such as effective rural extension services, access to plant genetic resources and biodiversity, storage and transport facilities, rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, information and communications technologies), access to local and regional markets, affordable credit and crop insurance, and smallholder-focused agricultural research and development, rural education and support to farmers’ organizations and cooperatives.1